


Online

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vortex's origins and early life.</p><p>Dysfunction AU.</p><p>Contains: references to robot smut (non-sticky), references to violence and murder, and liberal use of OCs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Online

He attained consciousness on a conveyor belt. Sentient ordnance, armed and combat-ready.

Cool metal held him upright, clamps on his arms and legs. Warm rubber thrummed beneath his feet. The air whirled with information: mass, sound, scent, distance, and the subtler fluctuations of temperature and electromagnetism. He took it all in, forming a mental facsimile of his surroundings, replete with potential, but - as yet - devoid of meaning.

His optics recalibrated instant by instant, flickering along to the staccato rhythm of dark-bright-dark as the conveyor belt carried him under strip lights and past avenues of busy mechanical arms.

Uninformed by experience, his cortex struggled to separate the useful from the incidental. Everything fascinated him; a glint of light on a high gantry; the tingling ripple of subvocal communication; each spark and buzz and vibrating hum as the conveyor briefly paused, and one of those mechanical arms bent to touch him - prodding, poking, testing.

It was only with the slow accumulation of data - the laying down of his first memories - that he began to distinguish what was relevant from what was not.

The conveyor lasted a breem. By the time the clamps released, basic integration of consciousness was complete.

* * *

It took a while to get used to his frame.

To think was to impose rigid control over systems that were best left to run by themselves. Each tiny servo in his hands, each unique valve controlling the flow of hydraulic fluid through his limbs, each bearing and cog and gear. All automatic, until he noticed them.

It wasn't until he stepped out of the factory, into a line of mechs who looked just like him – but who were _not_ him, who were all different in ways that had nothing to do with physical constitution – that he learnt to relinquish control to his automated systems. It seemed like forever.

* * *

He knew his designation - Vortex - assigned before he came online. It acknowledged his rotary format, and the potential for devastating atmospheric disturbance. The four blades radiating from his back quivered gently, ablaze with new sensation.

He had a name for almost everything, the knowledge as intuitive as his basic military programming. He knew the form of a primary fuel pump long before his fingers ever wrapped around one and pulled. He knew the shape and purpose of a laser core before he placed one beneath his heel and ground it into dull scrap metal.

He knew the composition of energon before he discovered the odour and colour and taste. Not to mention the warmth of it, spurting in regular gouts from a severed fuel line, splashing across the glass of his feet to form bright puddles on the pitted ground.

His knowledge existed as potential, each new stimulus revealing to him something more that he already knew, linking the basic elements of his personality component with an ever-expanding field of experience.

And anything he didn't know, he could find out. The texture of another mech's glossa; the smash of a fist against his jaw; the raw despair in the fading light of optics staring out from a greying frame.

He learnt these things quickly, thoroughly. What it was to interface, to belong, to fight. What it was to kill.

And he learnt that he enjoyed them.


	2. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A companion piece to 'Online'.
> 
> This is in the first person because I wrote it as a response to the 'first times' prompt over on tf_ic_prompts on LJ.

First times are always the most vivid.

When something is new, it's clearer, brighter. Each subsequent repetition of the action blurs into the next, the data is so similar it becomes hard to differentiate one from the other without a focused search of your long-term storage.

As such, the only events that become truly memorable have the element of novelty about them. And the events which have the greatest element of novelty tend to be the very earliest.

So, the first thing I remember? The click and whirr of machinery, the clatter of footsteps, the constant low shush of hydraulic fluid.

Hearing came before sight. Like when your systems boot from recharge. It's the same for squishies, so Swindle says, giving them an advantage against predators. Could be something the Quintessons took from organic life and replicated when they created us. Makes sense. When our predecessors broke from the Quintessons, they must have retained those protocols, increasing their numbers with the same basic code.

And so, my first impressions of my surroundings were through sound. Then touch - a flat moving surface beneath my feet; smooth planes of dense metal at my chest and the tops of my arms. After that came sight - the recognition of colour, distance, surface - then scent, then the awakening of other sensors, the acknowledgement of a kaleidoscope of busy signals thrumming through the air. With no way to decode them, they were meaningless, but they were also wonderful. Everything was wonderful.

Programming came before thought. It was all instinct in those first few joors. A breem or so on the conveyor, waiting for everything to integrate, then out of the factory and into the yard.

An Omega Guardian stood by the gate, so immense and heavy and still. There was a transport drone - also big, its tailgate down so we could march on board; and we knew how to march, in formation, every step the same. There was a huddle of engineers, all talking among themselves; small mechs, with sleek frames and bright paintjobs.

To me, they looked like targets.

And then there was us. Four hundred, all the same, and yet not the same. Subtle differences in energy signature, in stance, in the vibration of our engines, the brightness of our optics beneath identical visors.

None of us talked as we left the factory. Not that we didn't know how. We just didn't know that we _could_.

We didn't talk on the transport either. We just stood there, side by side in lines that stretched from wall to wall. We weren't waiting; with no experience to draw upon, we could have no expectations. We were merely dormant. But only superficially. There was plenty going on inside - a world of input ready to be analysed, synthesised, consigned to memory. We were busy building the first layers of our long term storage, our first experiences.

Straight off the assembly line and into standard augmentation. That's how it worked back then.

Not basic training, because the skills of aerial and hand-to-hand combat were written into our code, as intuitive as the activation of our cooling systems or the re-calibration of our optics in bright light. We were ready for war the very moment we came online.

No, it was all about experience, translating code into motion, taking our intrinsic knowledge and applying it in a world full of distractions. Making mistakes and learning from them, testing the limits of our agility and strength and speed - limits that were always somehow fractionally different for each of us, regardless that we were all built the same. Not making us good - we were already good. Making us _better_.

Standard augmentation happened at a base not far from the factory. A few of the engineers travelled with us, bright points of blue and purple in a landscape of crimson-lit grey.

We heard them talking, quietly, amongst themselves. Excitable little things, spindly fragile hands and long sensors cresting their heads. I wanted to hold them and squeeze, just to see what would happen.

I didn't. As with talking, I didn't know, then, that it was within the realm of possibility.

We learnt things from the engineers. We learnt that we weren't usual. That we were as close to custom as Cybertron got. That, compared with other military moulds - tetra jets and the sentinel drones - there were very few of us.

Not that this meant a great deal. We had no frame of reference, no way to set our emergent ideas about our own identity within a wider context. Sure, we knew what tetra jets were, just like I knew what an Omega Guardian was before I stepped out of the factory and saw one, but knowing what something is and experiencing it are two very different things.

Those first few joors are still crisp, still accessible. The memories are so easy to retrieve, unlike what came after – the blur of combat, the never-ending cycle of damage, repairs, damage.

They haven't decayed. Not like memory usually does, when you're stuck in a drawer in the Detention Centre unable to make your own backups, no way to transfer your own data. But these, they're still fresh.

I have Shockwave to thank for that.

He used to perform regular maintenance checks, rooting around in my databanks to make sure nothing had become corrupted, patching the bits that had. It was...

Yeah, it was just something he did.

I never did find out what those little engineers felt like to hold. Whether they really were as fragile as they looked.

Such a shame.


	3. Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vortex arrives at his first ever home, along with the rest of his batch.

“You might think you’re all that.” The instructor paced, head bowed, hands clasped at the small of his back. “You might think you’re the best thing since frictionless polish. You might think…” He paused, a challenge to his audience. Let the fraggers try to fill in the blanks.

They remained silent. Row after row of static grey shoulders, of stiff dark rotors and curved red glass. They didn’t look at him, but focused on some point in the middle distance, like they didn’t trust the opacity of their visors to hide the direction of their gaze.

Fresh out of the factory, every last one of them. Sure, they could take a mech apart piece by piece in less time than it took him to buff his wings in the morning, but they hadn’t. Not yet. So far, parade formation was all they knew.

He expelled a little air from his facial vents. “You might think you’re enough by yourselves, as you are.” He shook his head. “You’re not.”

A ripple passed through them, bruised pride manifesting as a slight trembling of their rotor blades, an incremental brightening of their optics.

“Sure, you’re programmed to fight, to hunt, to destroy.” The instructor became still, leeching the vitality from his frame and projecting it into his voice. “It. Isn’t. Enough! _You_ aren’t enough!”

Another ripple; the air developed a tang, as though ionized.

“You need discipline. You need training, you need practice. You need to get what’s up here - ” He tapped his helm, the sudden gesture sending another tremor through them. “All those pre-programmed skills, all that knowledge, all that expertise, and _live it_.”

This time, he let the silence stretch. Impatient, the lot of them. Trigger happy and altogether too curious about their own capabilities. But he’d make them wait. See which of them, if any, couldn’t handle the quiet, and which of them were assessing him, which were calculating his own weaknesses and simply biding their time.

He noticed a few. Strange how he could pick them out, from a crowd of individuals who were, to all intents and purposes, identical. He recorded their energy signatures; those ones would need to be watched.

The tension spread like vapour, seeping in through the gaps in his armour, putting his battle programming on high alert. After a while, he figured they’d had enough.

He made them wait another half a breem.

Then he grinned. “Welcome to standard augmentation. Your first lesson: discipline.”


	4. Basic Augmentation 1: Pulling the Strings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vortex's first fragup.

Two mechs stood in front of a monitor - a purple and blue rotary, and a large, dun-coloured grounder. The rotary spoke.

"Explain," he said.

"Same old scrap," the grounder replied. “Unexplained death on the base. We got no evidence, but everyone knows it was him."

"Hmmm..." The rotary shifted, blades clipping the grounder's leg. On screen, a group of young, grey heli-formers socialised in a mess hall. Identical in all physical respects, there were nonetheless stark differences in their mannerisms, indicating significant mental variation. "Your suspect’s the one in the middle?" the rotary asked.

The grounder nodded.

"So the others have their suspicions, but they haven't ostracised him?"

"No." The grounder adjusted the monitor's settings, focusing on the central mech. "He's popular, not a loner. He likes company."

The rotary tapped his face mask. “What about teamwork?" he said.

"He does all right," the grounder replied. "Long as things go his way."

"And when they don't?"

Another shrug from the grounder. "We get the situation we're in right now. The mech just went missing. No parts, no evidence of a fight." The grounder paused, itching his shoulder tire. "Windwarp just up and vanished."

"No chance he went AWOL?" the rotary asked. The light from the monitor splashed military red over his purple armour.

"Ha! Good one." The grounder kicked a chair out from under the console and sat with a huff. "We monitor their energy signatures. He was on base when it happened."

"Where?"

"Recharge," the grounder said, as though the word offended him. "We think. There's too many of them for an accurate pinpoint."

The rotary nodded, focusing on the screen. The volume was low, but he could make out laughter, military humour, the constant clatter of rotors. Their mech truly was in the thick of it.

"No-one's covering for him," the grounder continued. "But no-one's implicated him either. Windwarp ground a few gears, kept running his vocaliser when he should'a kept it on mute. Had a problem following orders too. Not issues with authority – it was the other kind; if there was a way to frag up, he'd find it."

"And you think that's why Vortex... targeted him?"

"It fits." The grounder looked up, meeting the rotary's gaze. "They came outta the factory together, they trained together. Four decacycles to learn each others' strengths and weaknesses. Windwarp went missing half a cycle after we released the team lists for their first live mission. He was meant to go with Vortex and two others."

"The others?"

The grounder laughed like sand scraping on metal. "In repair bay after Windwarp's last little frag-up."

"I see." The rotary stayed a while longer, watching the grey mech interact with his peers. He was sociable, tactile, not easily ruffled. Interesting.

Eventually, the grounder spoke. "So what do you think?"

The rotary smiled beneath his mask. "I want him under constant surveillance," he said. "Patch it through to my console."

"Will do," the grounder responded. "You, uh..." He stood as the rotary went to leave. "You think he's got what you want?"

"Perhaps," the rotary replied. The door swished open, and he glanced back once before leaving. "Put him through the grinder about Windwarp, then we'll see."


	5. Basic Augmentation 2: Implications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vortex's first time in an interrogation cell.

"You know why you're here," Wrench said. He took the chair opposite the new-build. Online for a mere four decacycles, and already he'd got himself a stay in an interrogation cube.

Vortex nodded. "Yes, commander." He didn't seem intimidated, which was interesting in itself. His battle mask had been removed, his visor too; his face was bare, his expression alert and curious.

Wrench slapped his hand flat on the desk; the heli-former didn't flinch. "You got nothing else to say?"

"No, commander."

"Tell me about Windwarp."

Vortex cocked his head to one side, his tail rotors clattering as he folded his arms on the desk. "He was a waste of resources," he said.

That was unexpected; he'd thought Vortex would express a bit of comradeship, give them reason to doubt that he was capable of killing his batchmate. "Really?" Wrench said, letting a measure of his surprise slip through.

"Really," Vortex replied. "Tailbreak should never have let him take charge. He made bad call after bad call. In a real combat situation, we would have died."

 _The frag do you know about real combat?_ Wrench thought, but said, "So he had to die instead?"

"I didn't kill him," Vortex said. He met Wrench's gaze for a moment, but refused to hold it. No challenge there, just something that could be read as sincerity.

Wrench didn't buy it. "But he was a waste of resources."

Vortex nodded. "Engineers should've recycled him on his first evaluation, sir."

"But they didn't." Time to change tact. "Why not?"

"They weren't grooming him for combat," Vortex said. "They want more med-evacs. They gave him the programming in his second cycle. They didn't want to have to start again."

Wrench's internal comms beeped him, incoming message from Spinister. He set the comm to display as text, scrolling along the bottom of his HUD. 'How does he know that?' Spinister asked.

"Windwarp tell you that?" Wrench said. Until then, he'd managed to forget that Spinister was watching.

"He did, sir."

"That was classified information."

"I never said he should have."

Cocky bastard, but at least he was talking, and if he kept talking long enough, he'd trip himself up. " _When_ did he tell you that?"

"On the sixty third," Vortex replied. "Fourth joor, after training."

"Twelve cycles before he went missing," Wrench said.

Vortex didn't respond. He just sat there, attentive, listening.

"You like Cyclone and Bombast, don't you?"

"They perform effectively, sir," Vortex responded.

Wrench leaned back. "That wasn't what I asked. Do you like them?"

"Sure," Vortex shrugged. "Sir. But I don't see how that's relevant."

Course you don't, Wrench thought. It was transparent, but a decent attempt at diversion. And no wonder. Judging by his sergeant's reports and the footage Spinister had commissioned, the heli-former was socialising well. Stood to reason he would have learnt a little manipulation along the way. "Two cycles before Windwarp went missing," Wrench said, "he made a bad call, didn't he?"

"Sir," Vortex said. Another tactic, no affirmation, no denial, as though he was trying to close down. But his optics were as bright as ever, his main rotors still; Wrench had his complete attention.

"Tell me what happened."

"Tailbreak put him in charge," Vortex said without pause. Not giving himself time to think. Good. "It was a training exercise, live ammo. We were meant to evade an ambush. Windwarp had us walk right into it."

"Cyclone and Bombast?"

"Anti-aircraft missile," Vortex said. His index finger strayed to his tail rotors, typical calming behaviour. Could be a good sign, depending on what Spinister wanted to see.

Whatever that was. Did the rotary want intel on the murder, or for Vortex to prove himself somehow worthy. Wrench wasn’t sure. Whatever it was Spinister had provisionally selected this new-build for was probably something Wrench didn’t want to know about, let alone have any part in. He decided it wasn't his job to care; he was here to find out what had happened to Windwarp. No going easy on the new-build just to help him impress Spinister.

"And?" Wrench pressed.

"And they went down," Vortex said. "Kaboom, sir."

"Describe it to me." This was the angle, Wrench was sure of it; with his batchmates injured - batchmates he got on well with, was fond of – what new-build wouldn't consider revenge?

"I didn't have a decent visual," Vortex replied, his main rotors juddering just a little. "Too much smoke. Saw Cyclone on fire, he was screaming. Bombast was out of it, I think he landed on his head."

Wrench watched the rotors; that wasn't the usual tell in this model. "Where were you?" he said.

"Where I should have been." Vortex left his tail rotors alone, leaned forward. "At the rear, providing covering fire. I called it in," he said. "The crash. Med-team was there in a hundred astroseconds."

It was like he wanted to be a hero, but Wrench didn't think that was quite it. The main rotors were still again, and Vortex's focus only intensified.

"I got there sooner than the med bots," Vortex continued. "Couldn't do much. Clamped off a few hoses, put out the fires."

"What about Windwarp?"

"Stood around like a spare part." Vortex huffed, but it sounded forced. Wrench was tempted to vent his own annoyance, but he stopped himself. If Vortex was trying to control his responses, to seem something that he wasn't, then Wrench would do best to play along.

"What a tool," he said, springing his faceplates into an easy grin. "So he just stood there doing nothing while you saved your team mates?"

Vortex's optics flickered; it was a standard physiological response, surprise leading to involuntary recalibration. "They would have survived without it, sir," he said. Still playing the reluctant hero, perhaps, or maybe trying to look like that's how he wanted to come across?

"Sure they would," Wrench said. "But frag, if that'd been me, Windwarp wouldn't have been able to see for the fist in his face."

This was met with a small shrug, an uncertain laugh. Genuine responses, Wrench was sure of it.

"So did you?"

"Did I what, sir?"

"Hit him."

There was a pause, as though Vortex was performing a risk/benefit analysis on his possible responses. Eventually, he said, "Yes, sir."

"Then what?"

"Then the med team arrived and we went back to base."

"Was Windwarp injured?" Wrench asked.

"By the blast," Vortex responded. "A few superficial dents, some fire  
damage."

"Knuckle marks in his battle mask?" Wrench grinned.

"Yeah." Vortex looked away for a moment. "That too."

Now _that_ was interesting. Averting his gaze, as though shamed, but nothing else about him indicated he was at all uncomfortable with his actions. "Not very satisfying though, huh?" Wrench said. "Swing your fist as hard as you like, the fragger's forgot about it by the next shift cycle. With tools like Windwarp, you wanna give 'em something a bit more personal, right? Something they'll remember."

"I... I suppose so, sir."

"Teach him a lesson, right?" Wrench said. "I mean, no-one could blame you. He deserved it."

Vortex's glare returned full force. "I didn't kill him."

"Sure you didn't," Wrench agreed, not believing a word of it. "But maybe you took him aside, told him a few home truths, beat him about a bit." _Somewhere no-one else would be able to hear you_ , Wrench thought. Not that there was anywhere like that on base. He tried to subdue his own curiosity; finding out for himself how Vortex had done it wasn't the same as fulfilling his objectives.

"No," Vortex said. "Sir."

"You wouldn't need to justify yourself," Wrench said. "He was a turbo-rat, everyone knew it. Should'a been deactivated soon as he came off the assembly line, that's what you said, right?"

It wasn't, but Vortex didn't disagree. He just said, "I didn't kill him."

"So you say, but maybe you beat him around a bit, let nature take its course. Maybe you hurt him a bit more than you meant to." It wasn't a rare occurrence with this model, especially at the beginning. Part of basic integration was to show them their strengths; there was a big difference between knowing how much pressure you were exerting, and feeling the metal crunch in your grip.

Vortex said nothing.

"We know you went off with him," Wrench said. "The cycle he disappeared."

"Respectfully, sir, I _did not_ kill him."

He was getting flustered, his index finger returning to the leading edge of one of his tail rotors. About time.

"You were the last one to see him alive," Wrench said, his grin vanishing. He straightened up, crossing his arms and leaning forward, mirroring the heli-former's pose. "You wanna tell me what _did_ happen?"

"I didn't kill him," Vortex said, a note of tension finally entering his voice. "Or cause him to die through negligence or not knowing my own strength. I know my own strength, sir."

"This is an opportunity," Wrench said. "You tell me what happened, you make _me_ understand why you did it, and I can get in a good word for you with command. Don't waste this chance."

"I didn't kill him." There was a clatter as one of Vortex's rotors struck his chairleg. "You have no evidence because there was no infringement of regulations."

"Nah, no evidence," Wrench said. "Just the security vids."

There it was again, that moment of recalibration, only this time the heli-former didn't give himself pause before speaking. "No," Vortex said. "You don't."

A little line of text appeared in Wrench's HUD at the exact moment the tannoy crackled, and the hologram generator suspended above them formed an exact replica of a purple and blue rotary in the centre of the desk. 'Go with this,' the text read, while Spinister's deceptively matter-of-fact voice echoed around the cube. "You're right," he said. "They don't. But _we_ do."

Vortex stared. "Oh frag," he said, then realised what he'd said and slumped, his forehead connecting with his arm. " _Frag_."

Wrench grinned; _Gotchya_.


	6. Basic Augmentation 3: Explanation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vortex explains.

Oh frag, that wasn’t good. Stupid copter, speaking before acting. Impulse control issues, like his first psych evaluator had said before he punched him in the thorax. Had to learn to control that, if he ever wanted to be anything.

That lesson had been worth remembering fifteen astroseconds ago. Before he'd as good as admitted to killing Windwarp.

Stupid purple copter with his stupid bluff.

And he'd fallen for it, leaping right in with his crazy-aft vocaliser and fraggin' annoying impulse control issues.

He'd be lucky if they didn't recycle him.

Vortex risked looking up. The view wasn't great. Chief Instructor Wrench was grinning like he'd just won a promotion, and that purple copter was still standing there in the middle of the desk, all tiny and hollogrammy and flickering, looking at him.

"Now," that voice came again over the speakers. "New-build 12 of batch 5..."

"I got a designation," Vortex snapped, and instantly regretted it. “Uh… Sir?” The purple mech looked official. _Seriously_ official. Security Forces or Intelligence or something. Vortex wished he’d paid closer attention to Tailbreak’s talks.

"So you have," the mech responded. Condescending glitch. Vortex wanted to punch his stupid, purple face in. Especially when he continued without acknowledging that designation. "You will now describe the events which led to the disappearance and deactivation of new-build Windwarp."

Wrench's engine rumbled, and Vortex forced his fists to un-ball. Trying to thump the hologram wouldn’t be the best plan he'd ever had.

Not that he'd ever had a good plan. Things just happened. Like Windwarp. And Spindrift before him, and that other guy back in his first cycle before they’d known each others' designations.

The first two had been written off as terminal mechanical failure. One of the med team had explained it while she loaded designation-unknown into the waste pod; not everyone survived basic augmentation.

Vortex’s engine threatened to stall; maybe he wouldn't either.

"Take your time," Wrench growled. His grin evaporated, replaced by that look he got when he was about to kick some tailboom.

"Uh..." Vortex began. Great start, he thought. A full and complete answer, just what they wanted to hear. But what the frag was he meant to say? _I didn't mean to, it was just too much fun to stop_ probably wouldn't wash. _He deserved it_ wasn't much better. And what if they really did have footage of the act? At least if he told the truth, there’d be nothing they could catch him out on – and if they didn’t catch him out on anything, they’d be likely to go easier on him? It wasn’t like he could think of anything else. OK, so, the truth… "I dismantled him and spread the bits around the damaged parts pods, the ones that go back to the factory."

Wrench stared.

"And?" the purple mech prompted.

"Wasn't lying when I said I didn't kill him." Vortex met the hologram's optics. "I didn't, sir, he was still online when I put him in there."

Wrench went to speak, but the hologram got in first. "Explain."

"It's, uh, kind of a blur?" Vortex said, but Wrench's body language told him that it better not be a blur for much longer. "After we got back to base, he kept following me around. He wanted to talk to me, said all this scrap about how we should all learn from our mistakes. But it was _his_ mistake what happened on that mission, not my mistake... Had an argument over comms, he kept on saying I should forget about it." Vortex paused, gave himself time to try to read Wrench's expression, to try to work out if this was what they wanted him to say.

He drew a blank.

"What next?" Wrench prompted.

"He said we oughta 'face and forget about it." Vortex shrugged. A suspicion sprang up that he should have taken a different fork at the last conversational junction, but there was no turning back now. "I thought why not, y'know? We weren't on duty or anything."

"So you interfaced?" Wrench's expression changed again, this time to 'I really do not want to know.'

"Um... No, sir."

"What _did_ you do?" the purple mech said.

"Well... We were about to, but then he started talking again, saying about how he never wanted for Tailbreak to pick him for command, and how the whole thing made him sick to his tanks, and how he just wanted to get out of there. And then I hit him." It had felt so reasonable at the time, the only suitable response to a audial-full of stupid, unpatriotic slag.

"And?" the purple mech urged. The hologram's optics were bright, his colourful rotors completely still.

Vortex gripped his tail blades and focused on the ‘inappropriate input’ warnings from his sensor net. "We'd gone to this bit outside medbay,” he said. “'Cause it's all clangs in there anyway and no-one can hear if you're 'facing. So...uh..."

"So no-one noticed you hit him?" Wrench said.

Vortex nodded. If only they’d give some indication that this wasn’t going to get him killed. Wasn’t the law meant to go easy on new-builds? He couldn’t remember. "We were outta the way, that corner behind the big pipes."

"Then what did you do?" mystery mech asked, and Vortex began to wonder if they were taking turns in their questioning on purpose.

"I kept hitting him," Vortex said. He searched desperately for a way to explain that would make them less likely to want him deactivated. Thank frag they didn’t know about the other two. "He was weak." He met Wrench’s optics, watching for his response. "He wasn't one of us. He went down quick, didn't fight back." Couldn't, Vortex thought, after the blow that cracked open his helm and made his CPU spark in the hot air. "Just kept beggin'. He must’a got the wrong personality component, some fragger in the factory swapped one of us for a civilian.” That’s it, shift the blame. “He wasn’t military, he was _scared_. I didn't want him with us, didn't want a rotary comin' out of here same time as us, looking like us, who wasn't one of us. It's just plain wrong. So I swiped a laser knife from medbay and cut him up, then put him in the pods, a bit in each one. Sent him back to the factory."

Wrench's mouth was open, but his vocaliser remained resolutely off.

"And what of his laser core?" the purple mech asked.

"They're lead-lined right?" Vortex said. "The waste pods. Stops repair bots getting all fragged up 'cause of laser cores gone critical or something. I.. Uh... Could be why you thought he was dead, sir?"

Wrench looked like he was about to blow one of his weird grounder gaskets. He took a long, slow vent. "Well frag me," he said.

Vortex got the impression that maybe he was meant to express some kind of concern about his former batchmate. Not that he gave a flying scrap about Windwarp, the idiot had it coming. But it could be the difference between deactivation and some other punishment. "Uh... Any chance he ain't dead?" Vortex asked.

"No chance," Wrench replied. "Waste pods go straight to the smelter."

Vortex couldn't help but laugh, and it wasn't until he stopped that he realised it was entirely the wrong response. "Uh..."

"Fraggin' copters." Wrench stood. "Sir," he said to the hologram, "I think we're done here."

The other mech didn't respond, the hologram simply vanished.

Wrench shook his head. "That's the trouble with building ruthless killing machines," he said, as though to himself. He ground out a laugh, giving Vortex a look that made him feel as though someone had stripped off all of his paint. "Every fraggin’ batch, we get someone like you. Get your aft outta that chair, you’re going in solitary."


	7. Basic Augmentation 4: Observation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spinister watches while Vortex attempts to cope.

Vortex didn't take well to solitary.

The first few joors were fine, the first cycle even. Spinister watched on the console in his office, as the new build tried to sit still on the cell's narrow bunk, as he tried to be patient, see it through.

But his optics lit up when the door's hatch drew back and a pale hand shoved his ration through. His hope was clear, excitement even. Then his disappointment, as the hatch closed again, the duty officer moving on without a word.

He didn't touch the energon.

By the middle of the second cycle, Vortex had begun to pace. Three steps, turn, three steps. The cell wasn't large, but he had room enough to move, to transform if he felt the need. No room to fly.

When his ration arrived, Spinister could see him fighting the hope, his bare faceplates stern and set. But he couldn't stop himself from turning to look.

Over the next few cycles, hope gave way to frustration, then to anger. It was impossible to keep a constant vigil, so Spinister replayed the footage collected while he'd been working or in recharge, winding at speed through joor after joor.

Dents appeared in the walls, scratches on the door. Spinister played the audio out of synch with the visual feed; a near-constant tirade of incoherent muttering which only let up when the new-build was in recharge.

There was a cap of three days straight for the solitary confinement of new-built military models. The instructors should have had him out of there, given him the company of his batchmates for a full half cycle. Did Vortex know his rights? Or did he guess - correctly in this case - that Spinister had the authority to override that particular piece of legislation?

Not that Vortex knew who Spinister was. Just a strange purple mech, one of the high-ups come to investigate the disappearance of Windwarp.

Spinister didn't give two bolts about Windwarp. Just another delta-frame heli-former from the Kaon factories; a prestige product, certainly, but hardly unique.

Vortex on the other hand, he was interesting. Anyone who could disable, dispatch, dismantle and make disappear one of his batchmates in the crowded and highly social environment of a barracks for new-built rotaries was someone worth watching.

If only he could keep a lid on his temper.

The next cycle, Spinister had the duty officer provide Vortex with self-maintenance equipment: fresh oil, coolant, a little standard issue joint lubricant. It was an opportunity for distraction, and Vortex seized it with both hands.

Spinister watched as the new-build used what he'd been given. Did he think it was regulation practice for mechs in solitary, or a hint that he would soon be released? Spinister studied the young rotary's mannerisms and the stream of low-volume self-directed chatter for any clue.

The more he listened, however, the more it became apparent that the self-directed chatter might not have been so self directed as it seemed.

There was nothing explicitly about Windwarp or the murder, and nothing about Vortex's two batchmates who had been released from medbay the same joor Vortex had crumbled in the interrogation cube.

Instead, Vortex seemed to be reading aloud from datafiles on military procedure, on tactics and strategies, approaches and protocol. Spinister could imagine the text spooling across the bottom of the new-build's HUD, the feed pausing each time Vortex made his own observations. Was he recording his thoughts, building up a new datafile to integrate his intrinsic knowledge with his experiences gained through training?

Spinister marked that thought for deletion. No, this wasn't about learning, this was about justification.

And not self-justification. The extracts Vortex chose to comment on were about command structures and the failsafes in place to prevent poor decisions having catastrophic consequences. They were about the qualities of a good leader versus the failures of a poor one.

Spinister smiled to himself; it was all quite facile, but at least the new build was trying.

He kept Vortex in solitary for a further two cycles. There was no more beating on the walls, no more string of expletives. Just a constant didactic diatribe aimed very obviously at reminding whoever was watching him that Windwarp had been in the wrong.

By the end of cycle eight, Vortex was holding together, but only just. He drank his energon, maintained his frame, and rambled his self-styled propaganda. But he couldn't keep from touching his tail rotors, and his main rotors turned constantly, forcing air past the rows of atmospheric sensors. Classic pacification techniques, something he would have learnt from a slightly older batch in the training barracks or picked up all by himself just because it felt good.

But when Spinister zoomed in on the new build's armour, his shivering was obvious.

* * *

"I won't lie," Wrench said. "I don't like this." His hologram wavered, split with little lines of static.

"Your opinion has been noted," Spinister acknowledged. He typed a command into his console and the secondary monitor lit up. The picture resolved slowly: Wrench sitting in his office, a datastick flicking between his fingers.

Unlike his hologram, the real Wrench looked tired, discomforted.

"He's been in nine cycles straight," the grounder stated. "That's three times regulation. He needs some time out."

Spinister didn't respond. On the primary monitor, Vortex was back to pacing, his left hand moving constantly over his tail rotors.

"You even listening to me?" Wrench snapped. "This build type doesn't do well alone - could frag up his whole development. I don't care what you got planned for him. Either we enforce proper punitive measures, or we call it quits on the punishment and send him back to complete basic augmentation."

Spinister let the silence spool out before responding. "Chief Instructor," he said quietly. "With all due respect, you have no authority to make demands."

"He's my responsibility," Wrench countered. "Any harm this does to him..."

"Have you read his psychological evaluations?" Spinister asked. "Have you listened to him recently?"

"I can see him," Wrench said, straightening in his chair. "That's enough for me."

"This elaboration on your opinion has been noted," Spinister said. His hand hovered over the comm-switch, ready to cut it off. But Wrench was fuming, his free hand clenched in a fist.

There was a chance he could go over Spinister's head, and that could cause problems.

"All right," he said. "Release him. But maintain constant surveillance-"

Wrench made a clicking sound, gearing up to object, but Spinister cut him off.

" _Constant_ surveillance, and make it clear to him that he is on probation."

It was a good enough excuse - make Wrench think that he was concerned about Vortex's violent tendencies. He wasn't. He just wasn't sure yet whether Vortex was what he was looking for.


End file.
